Meme units
Meme units are information cluster on different levels of abstraction that represent all meme. This is an extended representation of the knowledge pyramid. Meme are contents that are created and/or thought by humans as well as expressed, processed and stored with meme units. Meanings can be added or lost on each hierarchic level. This is also a reason for communication troubles and misinterpretations. Conscious consideration of the levels and their interpretations improve communication.
Meme units consist of five hierarchic levels: Token, data, information, knowledge and wisdom.
Token
are sense perceptible attractions that have informational content or get meaning assigned, as for example characters, light or sound signals and the like. The binary token system consists of the characters 1 and 0. The clustering of the token creates on further levels more and more complex meaning.
Data
consists of bundles of tokens that take place during transmissions. This can be sensor data or the sequence of ones and zeros (e.g. 00100111) in data processing. Data is structured, processed and corrected. Only the interpretation on further levels assigns the real meaning to the data.
Information
consists of data, to which meaning is assigned through interpretation. The appropriate conversion creates information (e.g. 39) from the data. The link with additional information, e.g. these data originate from a thermometer that was used to measure the temperature of a person, the unit is centigrade, … leads to the information that this person has fever. Additional meanings result from these insights on further levels.
Knowledge
is the mixture of a lot of information that is collected over time and mentally connected. Thus, a physician can pull from the symptoms conclusions, engage for further investigations and introduce counter measures (39 degrees fever - leg compresses). Through the continuous accumulation of information, knowledge continuously develops and changes over the time.
Wisdom
occurs when knowledge creates convictions that enable smart decisions and evaluations in complex situations, even if not all information is available. If the physician finds an open wound, he diagnoses with the measured temperature a blood poisoning that requires completely different treatment than a cold.
Depending upon the level of attention the observer comes to other insights, i.e. meanings. A project manager can conclude that in a project everything is all right, since he received all data; or that the information is completely available; or that a work package will not be finished in time; or that the project is endangered, because an essential component was already shifted several times.